


Liability (Reprise)

by That_stupid_girl



Series: A Little Much for Everyone [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Backstory, Eating Disorders, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Sam/Lena isn't like endgame or anything they just hookup once, Suicide Attempt, canon exists but like. does it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 13:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19769644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_stupid_girl/pseuds/That_stupid_girl
Summary: When she meets Samantha Arias, Lena is absolutely not looking for new friends. She already has two roommates at home, and a couple friends from undergrad she's pretending she hasn't accidentally stopped speaking to. She doesn't need to be making friends. She doesn't want friends. Sam, however, doesn't seem to get the memo.orThe one where Lena meets Sam as a grad student at Harvard and learns that not everyone hates her, even if her family does.





	Liability (Reprise)

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically just how lena and sam met and became friends, which i alluded to in the other work in this series. this comes first chronologically, but it doesn't matter what order they're read in or if you read either of them at all. 
> 
> the title is fairly obviously from liability (reprise) by lorde bc i think i'm funny. i don't like this one as much as the other one, and that one's not even very good so. it's angsty and pretty much me trying to explain backstory from the other work lol.
> 
> there's a fairly graphic suicide attempt (no blood or anything), but i know nothing about medicine or like hospitals or anything so please just ignore inaccuracies. i know they're there and i'm ignoring them too!

Lena meets Samantha Arias because of a professor’s mistake. Lena understands how one could accidentally schedule two appointments for the same time (she actually doesn’t, but she’s sure she would give someone the benefit of the doubt), but how any person, especially a graduate professor in any of Harvard’s schools could schedule _three_ simultaneous appointments is absolutely beyond her. 

Lena shows up early, but not early enough, and Dr. Lucas apologizes profusely as he ushers a young man with glasses and a shaved head into his office. Sam shows up only minutes later, while Lena’s still standing outside his door in furious shock. 

Lena relays the situation in a clipped tone, and Sam sighs, checking her watch, and asks Lena if she wants to get lunch. Lena blinks in surprise at the offer, and her stomach lurches at the thought of unplanned calories, even though she’s ~~supposed to be~~ getting better. 

“I know you’re free,” Sam laughs after a moment’s too much hesitation from Lena.

“I… Yes, alright,” Lena concedes, following Sam back out of the building. Sam makes no snide comment when Lena tells her she’s vegan, and leads them to a small restaurant Lena’s been to once before. 

Lena orders a salad and has a hard time focusing on the conversation while eating in front of a new person, but Sam doesn’t complain when she finishes her food before Lena’s even half done. 

Lena doesn’t trust Sam by any means, and she’s not even sure she likes her all that much, but there _is_ something about her that Lena can’t quite seem to place, some air about her that, against all Lena’s best efforts, simply makes Lena feel at ease in a way people so, _so_ rarely do.

They don’t become best friends after that—it isn’t nearly that easy—, but Sam stops to say hi when she sees Lena around, and she seems to be friends with one of Lena’s roommates, so she spends more time with her than she spends with most people.

To be fair, she doesn’t spend a lot of time with anyone, now, except for Drew and Alicia, and they’re more of a technicality than anything. Still, as she sees her more, Lena feels herself—slowly, oh so slowly—relaxing into the idea of a new ~~friend~~ acquaintance. 

Almost three months after they meet, Lena’s in the library as she so often is. It’s not her favorite library of the few she frequents, but she’s managed to claim a small table on the best floor, so she isn’t complaining. Her stuff—science and business books, papers, her coat, scarf, and gloves to fend off the December air—is spread out across the table and in the chairs, and it’s mostly stopped people from even pausing to think about a seat. Well, that and the fact that Lena’s resting bitch face is by design.

Three or four hours after Lena settles in, however, she’s pulled out of her reading by someone moving her coat off a chair to take a seat. Lena looks up, planning for rich bitch outrage, but falters when she sees it’s Sam, who simply nods at her and sits in the empty chair as if they’d planned to meet here.

Lena pauses for more than a moment as Sam pulls out books and a laptop and begins to work, but Sam doesn’t look up at her again. Lena’s always worked better alone, both in the anti-groupwork sense and in her tendency to hole up in her room to study, but after she gets back to work, she finds that she doesn’t mind Sam there. 

At six, Lena’s phone starts vibrating with a silent alarm. Without looking at her screen, she switches the alarm off and turns her phone over, ignoring the twist of shame and guilt in her stomach. She’s been at the library since half past nine this morning. She skipped lunch. It is absolutely crucial that she eats dinner, but she still has work to do and the thought of getting up and leaving to eat with another person at the table makes her stomach turn in a different way.

She refuses to glance toward Sam when the alarm goes off, but she can feel the other woman watching her. She’s not even subtle about it. After a few more seconds Sam goes back to her work, but less than twenty minutes later, she sighs loudly, closing her laptop. 

“What do you want for dinner?” Sam asks, voice quiet as she starts to pack up her things. Something sharp catches in Lena’s throat at the question and she’s hit with the cinderblock realization that this woman has somehow figured her out just by spending, at most, twelve hours around her.

“Excuse me?” Lena says instead of saying something incriminating or rude. Sam shrugs.

“I’m hungry, and even if you’re not, you’ve been here longer than I have. You should take a break and eat something. I thought we could grab something together, or if you want you can come over to my place and I can make something.” Lena bites her lip, studying the woman across from her. Sam doesn’t flinch at Lena’s furrowed gaze, her fingers tapping a staccato beat against the tabletop, or the clear mistrust in her entire demeanor, but she doesn’t harden either.

“Okay,” Lena finally says. Sam grins at that and moves to finish packing up her things. It takes Lena a minute longer, but Sam waits patiently as Lena wraps her scarf around her neck.

It’s dark when they step outside, and an involuntary shiver runs down Lena’s spine as she pulls her gloves on. 

“What are you in the mood for?” Sam asks, burrowing into her coat against the wind. Lena shakes her head, following as Sam heads toward the street.

“Oh, I don’t care. Whatever you want.” Sam simply hums as if she was expecting that answer. “As long as it’s close,” Lena adds after a particularly nasty gust of wind.

“You’re good with my apartment?” Sam asks. “It’s just another block. I’m a decent cook.” Lena can’t help but hesitate a moment again, but she nods. 

“Good, ‘cause I told my sitter I’d be back by six thirty, which is late to begin with, and I’m already pushing that,” she laughs, but Lena can see the tension in her shoulders, the way it looks like she’s holding her breath. And, to be fair, Lena’s chest does seize at the idea of interacting with kids, but that’s her own thing, and it shouldn’t have to be something Sam worries about.

“Right up to the last second, then,” Lena says in lieu of directly acknowledging that she doesn’t care that Sam has a child. Sam laughs. 

“A lot of the time I’m straight up late.” 

Sam’s daughter’s name is Ruby and she’s newly nine years old. She isn’t shy like Lena was, and she tells her that she likes soccer, _Austin & Ally _, and Taylor Swift. Lena has no clue who Austin and Ally are, but as she listens to Ruby talk she learns about the show. As Sam cooks, she smiles at Lena and Ruby, sitting at the kitchen table, and Lena feels like she maybe isn’t doing too poorly.

Sam makes pasta with pine nuts, herbs, and a lot of onion. As Sam scoops pasta onto their plates, Lena notices that she’s feeding her about as much as she’s feeding her nine year old. It’d be embarrassing if it wasn’t such a relief, which is embarrassing in and of itself.

She does wonder, though, if she did something to let Sam know about the food thing. It should feel more exposing than it does, that Sam seems to have figured it out with almost no information, but… Well, Lena sure isn’t going to ask her, so she’s not sure she’ll ever know.

When they finish dinner, Sam sends Ruby off to get ready for bed, apologizing that dinner was late tonight. Lena feels a surge of guilt at that, even though she logically knows that Sam made the decision to stay at the library and to invite her over for dinner. The guilt dissipates, just slightly, when Ruby tells Lena she’s her favorite one of Sam’s friends, even though it brings another wave of embarrassment with it; she really shouldn’t be so flattered.

“I can’t believe my nine year old just made you blush,” Sam laughs when Ruby leaves the room. It only makes Lena blush harder. 

“Are you heading out or do you want to stay for a glass of wine?” Sam asks. Lena does want to stay for a glass of wine, since she always wants a glass of wine, but it is getting late.

“I should probably head out, actually,” she says, glancing at her watch. “ _The Half-Blood Prince_ is supposed to be on tonight and my roommates wanted us to watch it. One last chill night before final assignments and then actual finals.”

“Wow. Actually watching a programmed movie. That’s old school.” Lena rolls her eyes, pulling her coat on.

“I think there’s a marathon. I don’t know.” Sam just smiles, giving Lena her best as she helps her out the door. When she gets home, Lena’s roommates seem happy to see her, and the whole day makes her feel warm inside.

On Friday, Alisha asks Lena if she wants to come to a club with her. Lena says no, and says no again, and continues to say no until her roommate simply wears her down. It’s really and truly the last free night before finals, whether exams or papers or projects. Lena already has her whole Sunday blocked out with meetings with her class and working on her own assignments, but her Saturday is supposed to be just general studying.

So, yes, Lena’s weak. And yes, she gives in more quickly than she’d like to admit, but she did, at least, try. She might not have tried very hard, but she did try.

Lena takes four shots, one after the other, before they leave. Drew raises her eyebrows at Lena when she asks her for a beer. Lena, however, doesn’t back down, so Drew simply opens up another bottle after passing one to Alisha. She passes the drink to Lena, holding her own bottle up for a half-assed cheers. When they leave, Lena is minutes away from being drunk with Drew and Alisha two and three drinks in, respectively.

They take an Uber to the club, and Lena’s well on her way to wasted by the time they’re in the line. She’s not used to wearing clubbing clothes, and she can’t help but pull at the hem of the white faux-leather skirt she’s wearing, even though she knows it’s plenty long enough to cover not only her ass but the bandaids on her thighs, as well. 

She’s cold, too, and that only contributes to her discomfort. It's far too cold to be out without a coat, but here she is. Drew and Alisha shiver beside her, but the line moves fairly quickly. Even though Lena’s been twenty-one for almost a full year, the relief of having a real ID that will get her in is still palpable. The bouncer does seem to find it strange that Lena, who by most standards should still be in undergrad, is hanging out with two twenty-four year olds, but all their IDs are clearly real, so he lets them in without question.

When they get inside, Lena immediately heads to the bar, Drew and Alisha following. Neither of them are eager for Lena to drink more immediately, but they both know she’ll buy them drinks when she buys her own, and that seems to outweigh the cons for now.

When the bartender stops in front of her, Lena orders a New York sour, a vodka cran, and a Long Island iced tea without even glancing at Drew and Alisha. When the drinks come, Lena takes the sour, downing half of it in one go. Alisha does her best not to worry, taking the tea Lena hands her and thanking her.

They hang out around the bar for a while, Lena ordering another round of drinks before Alisha even finishes her first one. 

“Can I get coke this time?” Drew asks, but otherwise the order doesn’t change. Lena takes longer on this drink. At this point, it’s been close (ish) to an hour since they started drinking, but barely half that since Lena’s felt it. She’ll finish this drink, wait a bit, then maybe do a couple more shots if she feels up to it. 

A little while later—and a few minutes since Lena’s been nursing melting ice cubes—Drew and Alisha decide it’s time to dance. Lena knew this was coming, since it is the point of the night and all. Lena knows how to dance—she almost went pro, after all—, but this isn’t the kind of dance in which she thrives.

Still, the tips an ice cube back into her mouth to suck on and follows her roommates to the dance floor. A remix of some Sam Smith song is playing, and she does her best to forget the mass of people around her as she starts to move.

It’s a technically nice but semi-seedy club in a college town, so it doesn’t take long for a guy to come up behind her. He does, though, hesitate before pulling her in, giving her time to duck away if she’d rather. She would rather, but she’s already lost Drew—doing lines with sorority girls in the bathroom, if Lena knows her at all—and Alisha’s dancing on a blond guy even Lena finds almost attractive, one of his hands already creeping toward the red fabric over her chest, so Lena says fuck it and lets the dude grab her hips, grinding against him. 

She lets it continue a few minutes past when she feels him getting hard, then pulls away as subtly as she can manage. A group of girls motions her in after that, no doubt noticing her leave that guy. She thinks she recognizes one of them as someone who was a year below what should have been her graduating class at MIT, but she can’t be too sure. Regardless, Lena’s drunk enough to be able to enjoy dancing like this, in a large group of friendly strangers.

After a few more songs, she ducks out, making her way back toward the bar. She goes to reach for her phone before she remembers she left it at the apartment since she had nowhere to put it in her skirt and couldn't keep it in her bra with her sheer top. She pushes the sleeve of the shirt up just slightly to uncover the watch on her wrist. It’s almost midnight already. 

She doesn’t know where her friends are, but she knows they won’t leave without finding her first, so she finds she doesn’t mind.

At a table near the bar she sees a group of people, a couple of whom she recognizes. There’s a guy who was in her (original) class at MIT who she thinks stayed on for a grad program, his girlfriend, and a girl Lena remembers being friends with Drew at some point. 

The boy—well, man, she supposes, since he’s older than she is—spots her, too, and motions her over. 

“Lena!” he calls, as if she’s not already moving toward him. Lena remembers his name being Nathan, but she’s not quite confident enough to say it out loud. She does join them, though, grabbing a chair from another table to join their table of five. 

“Hey, dude,” he grins, leaning across his girlfriend to give Lena an incredibly awkward hug that barely even reaches. "How are you?" His girlfriend rolls her eyes, pushing him off the tabletop and back into her seat. Lena’s mouth quirks up at the corner.

“Good,” she shrugs. “School.” Everyone at the table nods, Nathan rather emphatically. 

“Ignore him,” his girlfriend says with a smile, removing his absentminded hand from her dark hair. “I’m not sure we ever actually met. I’m Claire.” She sticks out a hand, and Lena maneuvers the handshake much more easily than the cross-table hug.

“Lena.” The introduction seems to remind Nathan that Lena doesn’t know everyone at the table. He reaches back across Claire to tap on Lena’s arm. Lena raises her eyebrows at him, fully smiling now.

“Lena,” he starts, “this is Malachi.” He gestures to the black guy with glasses to Lena’s right. He waves awkwardly. Lena smiles back. “Andres,” he continues, pointing across the small table to the guy next to Malachi. “And that’s Amelia,” he says about the girl who used to hang with Drew and who is currently squished into the corner of a booth.

“We’ve met,” Amelia says, giving Lena a tight smile. It’s not rude, but there’s enough chill in her voice that Lena wonders what happened between her and Drew. Nathan just shrugs.

“They’re all in my program,” he tells her. “Guys, this is Lena. She was in my comparative politics and and gen chem classes freshman year before she left us all in the dust.” Lena can’t help but blush at that.

“We’re doing shots. Do you want in?” Malachi asks. Lena maybe shouldn’t have more, but she’s more than willing to.

“Please.” Malachi nods, scooting out of the booth and weaving toward the bar. He returns a few minutes later with a tray of twelve shot glasses, salt, and slices of lime, which he sets down carefully on the table. 

“Half kamikaze and half tequila. I didn’t know who wanted lime,” he says. 

Lena licks the back of her hand, laughing as Nathan sets up to lick salt from Claire’s cheek. The ritual is quick, and Lena doesn’t mind the taste of tequila too much. She bites lightly into the lime, barely bothering to suck on it. She takes the other shot with Claire quickly after, not wanting to wait. She considers heading back to the dancefloor, but she doesn’t want to be rude, so she should probably hang here for at least a little while.

She sits through a conversation she doesn’t pay much attention to, but it’s not unpleasant. They’re talking about some professor at MIT that Jason and Amelia have when Lena looks over toward the bar. Her eyes are moving aimlessly across the crowd when they catch on a familiar face.

Sam’s standing near the corner of the bar in a black dress, stirring a straw in a drink and looking toward the dance floor. She looks slightly uncomfortable, and Lena doesn’t blame her. If she’d have to guess, she’d say Sam probably doesn’t get out much—even less than Lena—with a daughter in fourth grade.

Sam looks over, then, and she smiles when she sees Lena. Lena smiles back, then turns back to the table. She waits a moment for a lull in the conversation before pushing her chair back and standing.

“Hey, one of my friends just got here. I’m gonna go dance with her. I hope you have a good night,” she says, awkwardly pulling a twenty out of the waistband of her skirt. She places it on the table in front of Malachi.

“For the drinks.” He smiles at her, pocketing the money, and she walks away as they all wish her a good night.

Sam’s still at the corner of the bar, but she’s downed most of her drink by the time Lena gets there.

“Wanna go dance?” Sam asks. Even though Lena had claimed that’s what her plan was, she doesn’t particularly want to, but she says yes anyway. They make their way back through the crowd, Lena slightly less coordinated than she was hoping for as the last two shots hit her. She doesn’t recognize the song, but laughs as Sam breaks into some ridiculous dance moves. They stay like that for a few songs, Sam turning away three guys who come up to her and Lena mostly managing to avoid any advances with her awkward shyness.

After a song that Lena feels is overproduced—though she doesn’t know nearly enough about music to actually argue her point—ends, something with a heavy baseline and piano comes on. The singer is familiar, but Lena can’t place her any farther than someone she heard all the time when she was in London last summer. 

Sam grins, fanning herself dramatically. Lena rolls her eyes, pushing her own hair back off her sticky forehead. It’s more than warm in here, and they’ve been jumping around like fools for the last ten minutes. Sam starts moving again, but slower, or at least less sporadic, more like everyone else around them. Lena follows suit.

She’s not totally sure how it happens, but within a minute Sam’s pulled Lena up against her. Lena brings her arms around Sam’s neck, her wrists crossed loosely over Sam’s shoulders, as she moves against her. It’s still friendly enough to be innocent, but Lena, personally, is hoping for a different outcome more and more. She’s not secure enough in either her knowledge of Sam or her general existence to give Sam any substantial hints that she’d be down, but when Sam tentatively moves her hands down to Lena’s hips to turn her around, Lena complies easily.

She moves against Sam, trying to ignore how much she relishes the throbbing between her legs. Sam tugs her even closer. Lena can feel Sam’s hot breath on the back of her neck. Sam’s usually taller than her by a few inches, but Lena’s in five inch heels and Sam’s are three at most, so they’re almost even. Lena’s knees are a little bent, though, as she grinds against the other woman, so Sam has to lean down to talk in Lena’s ear.

“Do you maybe want to…” Sam trails off. Her voice is rough and close and it makes warmth pool in Lena’s gut.

“Bathroom?” Lena gasps. Her underwear are, honestly, already wrecked, and she’d rather not wait to get back to one of their places. (Besides, it would have to be Lena’s place with her two well-meaning but nosy roommates or Sam’s with her literal child. So, really Lena’s not even being all that rash.)

Sam doesn’t reply, instead taking Lena’s hand and pulling her through the throng of people toward the bathrooms. Lena’s suddenly immensely glad Drew wanted to come here tonight, for the eight single use bathrooms if nothing else. 

The line’s not long enough that Lena feels too shitty about tying up one of the bathrooms, especially since she’s sure other people are doing the same, and it’s not like she expects this to take _all_ that long. While they wait, Sam pulls Lena in close to her, tightening her grip on her hips. Lena starts to move against her, just slightly, not enough that someone would realize if they weren’t actually looking. Besides, some dude _literally_ has his face in a girl's cleavage a few people in front of them, so. There’s that.

Lena keeps the slow, steady pace, grinding against Sam even as they move up in line. Eventually, Sam groans, her hot breath in Lena’s ear and her fingers digging into Lena’s hips. Lena feels her knees go weak. It takes everything she has to play coy.

“Something the matter?” she asks, managing an innocently concerned glance at Sam over her shoulder. Sam groans again.

“I swear to God, Lena,” she mutters, but the threat would be empty even if she finished it. 

Just a couple minutes later, Sam’s pushing Lena into a bathroom, flipping the lightswitch on and fumbling to lock the door. Lena barely has time to even attempt to collect herself in the dim buzzing light before Sam’s pushing her up against the empty wall, kissing her furiously. It’s dark enough and Lena’s drunk enough that everything about Sam feels a little fuzzy at the edges, but when she moves from Lena’s mouth to nip at her jaw, it feels in sharp focus. 

The foreplay is almost nonexistent. It’s, at most, two minutes before Sam’s fingers are at the hem of Lena’s skirt.

“You’re sure you’re good to do this?” Sam asks, and Lena knows it’s double-sided, but she wants it and she’s sober enough to mean it. She nods, breathing hard, but Sam’s still watching her, waiting.

“Yes. _Fuck_ — Yes. Please.” It’s a mess of a response, but it’s enough for Sam, and— Look, maybe Lena’s a _little_ more drunk than she originally thought, because she wasn’t even thinking of the bandaids on her legs—the fucking _Disney princess_ bandaids on her legs—until Sam’s hiking Lena’s skirt up over her hips. Lena’s not being dramatic; she swears she feels her heart stop. 

She knows Sam knows they’re there, but the woman doesn’t pull away, and she doesn’t chastise Lena, and she doesn’t look at her like she’s a blown egg. Instead, Sam goes back to kissing her, fingers working to slide Lena’s underwear down her thighs. Lena’s mortification increases tenfold when the garment catches on the bandages, but she’s a little too busy being soaking wet and suddenly exposed, and Sam simply presses a thumb against the bandaid to press it against Lena’s skin as she pulls the underwear down. They drop to Lena’s ankles, and she manages to step one heeled foot out. She looks ridiculous, she’s sure, but at least she has a little bit of mobility. 

Sam kisses along her jaw, using both hands to untuck Lena’s mesh shirt from her skirt that’s resting above her hips. As Sam moves down her neck, she brings one hand up under the mesh, pushing Lena’s bra up and massaging a nipple. Lena is mind-numbingly aware of Sam’s other hand moving toward wet heat.

She bites at Lena’s collarbone the same moment her fingers slip past Lena’s folds, and Lena neither stops the high pitched gasp that leaves her lips nor wants to. If Lena were even a little more sober, she would be embarrassed by how quickly she comes. All it takes is a few pumps of Sam’s fingers, the pressure of her thumb against her clit, and her murmuring encouragement into her neck, and Lena’s arching her back and gasping a jumbled mix of Sam’s name and expletives. 

Lena takes a moment to come down, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. She can almost _feel_ Sam smirking at her, and when she opens her eyes she’s not surprised to find that’s exactly what she sees. She tries to glare at her, but it falls more than a little flat, considering the circumstances. 

She pulls her underwear back up over her thighs and her skirt back down over her hips, blushing at the way Sam’s gaze can’t help but linger on the multicolored bandaids. She still doesn’t say anything, though, and for that Lena’s grateful, no doubt about it.

Before she has the chance to dwell on it longer, she pushes herself off the wall, motioning for Sam to take her place. She does, and Lena kneels down in front of her, ignoring the discomfort in her knees and the way her skirt rides up.

“This okay?” she asks, soft, looking up at Sam. It’s either too dark for Lena to see the brown of Sam’s eyes or her pupils are insanely blown, but Lena would bet it’s a combination of both. 

“Yeah, this is fine,” Sam manages to joke, voice high and breathy as Lena pushes her dress up, her underwear to the side, and brings her mouth straight to Sam’s clit. 

Lena’s less embarrassed about the quickness of her own orgasm after she makes Sam come in possibly even less time, leaving them looking fucked and, in Lena’s case, a little fucked up. Sam pulls her dress back down as Lena stands up, fixing her own skirt. Sam uses the mirror over Lena’s shoulder to fix her hair as Lena completely wipes off her lipstick, leaving the skin around her mouth tinged pink. She slips the hair tie off her wrist and pulls her own hair up into a bun, knowing that she’ll be leaving soon anyway. 

“Do we need to talk about this?” Sam asks, suddenly nervous, as Lena’s reaching for the doorknob. Lena stops, looking back at her with her eyebrows drawn together. “Like I.. I don’t want you to think I’m like…” Sam doesn’t seem to know how to finish. 

“We’re friends, right?” Lena asks. 

“Yeah.”

“So we’re friends,” Lena shrugs. “And you were also a great fuck.” Sam laughs at that as Lena opens the door.

“Thanks, Lee,” she grins as she steps back out into the club beside her. “You too.” Despite being the one to first issue the compliment, Lena blushes, making Sam laugh more.

They head toward the bar, but run into Alisha before they make it very far. 

“There you are!” the other girl exclaims before her eyes slide over toward Sam. She gives Lena a questioning look, but shrugs it off quickly. “Drew’s, um, ready to go,” she says. 

“Of course she is,” Lena sighs, already resigning herself to a night of making sure Drew doesn’t choke on her own vomit. No matter how many times this happens, she and Alisha are always surprised that’s it’s Drew, not Lena, that they need to backpack.

“That’s my cue,” Lena says to Sam, who grimaces in understanding. “Library Sunday?”

“Sure. And, Lena, you know I’m here if you—”

“Yeah,” Lena cuts her off. “I— Yeah. Thank you. Really.” Sam gives her another smile, softer, and moves alone toward the bar as Alisha and Lena start toward the exit where Alisha left Drew with a group of smokers she knows from a class. 

Alisha turns to her, and Lena shakes her head before she can even open her mouth. “Shut up,” she says, barely managing to keep a smile off her own face. 

“Come on, I didn’t even say anything,” Alisha whines. Lena arches an eyebrow at her. Alisha seems to concede the point, but they’ve reached the door, so she might just be focused on getting Drew into the Uber she ordered and ordering her not to throw up.

Lena goes home for winter break. More accurately, she goes home for winter break and leaves within a week.

She has exams right up to the end, and schedules her flight for the twenty-second, just so she can put off seeing her mother for as long as possible. It’s always been more than tense with them, obviously, but Lex and Lionel made it bearable when Lena was young. Now, Lionel’s ashes are on the mantel and Lex has been around less and less.

For instance, he’s not there when she walks in the front door past 10:00 p.m. three days before Christmas. She was really hoping he would be. She hasn’t seen him since his birthday last spring. 

Her mother greets her in the entryway, dressed to the nines and holding a glass of what Lena assumes to be Merlot, not even bothering to put up a facade of warmth. She tells Lena her brother will be in tomorrow morning, then turns toward the living room without saying goodnight. Lena steels herself against the rush of disappointment, setting her shoulders even as she wants to curl in on herself. She takes the stairs up to her room. She knows what is expected of her.

Lex is different. She knows it from the moment she sees him the morning after she gets home. He’s shaved his head. There’s something sickly about him, but he’s buffer than she remembers him being. He’s more neurotic. She’s not sure she sees the tension leave his shoulders during the entirety of lunch, despite the jokes he cracks and the compliments he gives the food.

More than anything he seems distracted. They play a game of chess on Christmas morning before the overly formal dinner Lillian requires despite it being just the three of them. Lena has him in twenty-seven moves. It’s the fastest game they’ve played since Lena turned eight. 

“Check mate.” Lex is sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring at the board, and he doesn’t look up when Lena speaks. “Check mate,” she repeats, trying to keep the hard edge out of her voice. He glances up then.

“Hmm?” He looks down at the board. He seems surprised to see the game in motion, like he hasn’t been moving the pieces. He sees his king.

“Oh.” He starts to clear off the board. “I’m sorry, Ace. I know I haven’t been much fun this week. I have a lot on my mind.” He sounds like he means it, and it’s not condescending, really, but Lena can’t help but feel like she’s being talked down to. She’s never felt that way with Lex before.

“I know that.” It’s almost a whine, the way it comes out, and if Lex were looking at her he’d notice her flinch at how defensive it sounds. 

“I know that,” she repeats, managing to calm her voice. “I just miss you. You won’t even tell me what you’re working on.” He gives her an apologetic smile.

“It’s just company stuff. You’ll understand later.” It’s such a copout of an answer, but she _does_ understand, sort of. Running LuthorCorp isn’t an easy job, and Lena can’t even imagine how difficult it would be before thirty years old, even if Lex has already been CEO for four years.

He gets up from his seat, heading toward the door before he turns back.

“When you run R&D in a couple years you’ll be in charge of all my projects.” He’s smiling at her, and it makes her smile, too. 

Dinner goes exactly as expected. Lex continues to put up his usual front of pretending that nothing is wrong between Lena and their mother. He’s been doing it for years at this point, and though it isn’t at all effective in mitigating Lillian’s vitriol or Lena’s interesting combination of spite and shame, it’s probably the only thing that keeps their meals from literally collapsing in on themselves. 

Still, the empty seats at the table are filled mostly with a suffocating quiet. Lillian sips an identical glass of red wine, only eating intermittently. Lex spends far too long cutting his steak. Lena eats her vegan meal the chef prepared. Though she knows it’s good, she can’t help but feel like she’s eating sand. She keeps eating anyway—shove it down and all that. 

She’s relieved when she’s able to go back to her room, but she wakes the next morning to Lex shouting in his room down the hall. He’s not talking to their mother—as if he’d ever yell at her—, so Lena assumes he’s on the phone. She can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but she’s never heard him this violent. A minute later the shouting stops, followed by the slam of a door. Lena hates herself for the way tears spring into her eyes, uninvited. She’s been doing better, but it seems like everything else is going to hell.

She pulls herself out of bed. She hasn’t even been here for four days, but it already feels like an eternity. After a shower, she dries her hair, does her makeup, and dresses in a black jumpsuit, choosing a pair of heels and a coat in case she decides to actually leave her room. It’s not looking too likely, if she’s being honest. She isn’t sure she can survive another week here.

She settles at her desk, opening her computer. She changes her ticket to a flight leaving tomorrow morning. Her mother can eat dirt if she has a problem with it. Honestly, Lena’s not even sure she’ll notice she’s gone. All Lena needs is to make it through one more day, and then she can go back to her much shittier apartment where her mother is not and where she doesn’t have to think about how strange her brother’s acting.

She gets in a fight with Lex. They’ve argued before, but never as much as other siblings she knows, due mostly to their greater age difference. Besides, those fights were always about whose design was better or whether or not Lena should be allowed in his room, not about who deserves the right to live their lives.

He says something offhand about aliens, and usually Lena would let it go, since she loves him and is generally averse to confrontation, and doesn’t feel all that strongly—in either the positive or negative—about aliens herself. This time, though, it’s just the wrong side of actively xenophobic, and it makes her realize just how little she’s seen of her brother since he took over their father’s job. She pushes back.

“Come on, Lena,” he scoffs. “Don’t be daft. If they’re allowed to live here, then soon they’ll be allowed to marry humans, and we’ll have half-breeds running around playing with our children. You know I’m right.” 

“You sound like someone arguing against gay marriage,” Lena says. She feels something dissolve behind her sternum when he merely shrugs. Lex has known she’s gay for years, and while he’s never been outwardly supportive, he’s never said something like this either. She sets her jaw, crossing her arms over her chest and not even minding how defensive it looks. Lex sighs.

“Look, Ace,” (The nickname is an obvious attempt to pacify her, and she hates that it works.) “all I’m saying is we can’t have that kind of unchecked power. Superman could kill us all if he wanted, and I’m sure he’s not the only one of them out there. Superman isn’t a god, and we can’t treat him like one. He’s not one of us. LuthorCorp is working to make sure that doesn’t happen, so I can protect people like you.” She’s the one that scoffs this time, raising a manicured eyebrow at him. His face hardens. “You’ll thank me soon enough,” he says, then stalks out of the room. 

It’s the last thing he says to her before he kills thirty-two people. The memory is enough to make her sick.

She sees the news before she gets the call from her mother. She’s just gotten out of the biochem class she TAs when she sees live footage on a TV across the hall. She only stops because her brother’s face is in the bottom left corner of the screen. The sound is off and she can’t quite tell what’s happening, but the running head at the bottom says twenty-four people are already did. 

It’s only a few blocks to her apartment, but she orders an Uber, refusing to open Safari or any news apps as she waits. There’s a growing pit in her stomach. She doesn’t want to think about what this means. 

The apartment’s empty when she gets back, with Drew at work and Alisha at the library if she’s not in class. She drops her bag inside the door and turns on the TV. After two minutes, she sees pictures of the first bodies. She barely makes it to the bathroom before she vomits. 

Her phone rings as she’s walking back to the living room, mouth acrid and eyes stinging. It’s her mother. She tells her not to speak to the press, to make sure they think she didn’t know this was happening—which she _didn’t_ , but whatever—, and that she’ll need to come home. She doesn’t even argue. 

She doesn’t even pack, either, and stays seated on the couch, coat still on, staring at the TV until Drew and Sam walk in the door over an hour later. It’s clear before she even looks at them that they know.

“Lena,” Drew starts, voice softer than Lena’s ever heard from her. Lena just shakes her head, unable to deal with pity she definitely doesn’t deserve. She’s not able to stop the tears that start to fall.

“Oh, honey,” Drew says, moving toward the couch to pull Lena in a hug. Lena’s still shaking her head, even as runs her hand through her hair and Sam rubs her back. She can’t stop disagreeing with their kindness right now.

“He killed them,” she finally gets out. “He killed them all, and I didn’t—” She can’t even finish the sentence, both because of the wave of sobs and because she can’t bring herself to say that she wasn’t able to stop him, that she didn’t do anything even though she _knew_ how he felt, that this is just as much her fault as it is Lex’s.

The trial is expedited, and the month leading up to Lena’s testimony doesn’t feel real. She turns twenty-two, and tries to celebrate with her friends despite the overwhelming emptiness she feels. The deaths of so many people she never knew hurts her, and, because she’s selfish, she’s mad at Lex for killing them all just a week before her birthday. 

Even with the onslaught of online hate and in real life heckling, Lena tries to pretend she’s fine, but she can barely bring herself to speak anymore, and everyone—Alisha, Drew, and Sam, who Lena thinks might be dating Drew now, though she hasn’t had the energy to ask—notices. They try to help, try to get her to talk about it, but she simply can’t.

She goes home for her mother’s testimony, and watches, jaw clenched, as she talks about what a wonderful man Lex is.

When Lena testifies against him a week later, she holds eye contact with her mother the entire time. Lillian stares right back, eyes hard, even when Lena starts to cry.

She gets home on a Wednesday. She TAs on Thursday, but the professor emails her and asks her not to come. She tries to go to the library instead, but someone spits at her on the street before she makes it even a block, so she spends the day holed up in her room, not even leaving to go to class.

She doesn’t think she can live like this. It’s the worst she’s ever felt, and she’s already tried to kill herself before. She really isn’t strong enough for this. She hates it, she really does, but as soon as she thinks it, she’s already made up her mind.

She spends Friday in her room, too, but orders Chinese for her roommates and Sam and asks if they want to watch a movie. Drew, especially, seems almost suspicious at Lena’s sudden want to spend time with them, but Lena just tells her that she loves them and wants them to know that she does appreciate everything they do for her. It is, Lena knows, a blatant warning sign for suicide, but she can’t stop herself from trying to assure that they know it has nothing to do with them.

The next day, Lena refills her prescription for the sleeping pills she never used. Her hands don’t shake as she hands the pharmacist her card or when she picks out her usual cheap vodka at the liquor store. 

When she gets home, Drew is just walking in the door, getting back from studying with Sam. She asks if Lena wants to come to a movie with her, Alisha, and some of their friends. Lena does not, but thanks her anyway. 

As soon as the two of them leave, Lena writes a note. It’s short and concise because she has far too much to say, and there’s no point in saying some of it if she can’t get it all across. She addresses it to her roommates, and tells them to send it to her mother if she asks. She leaves it on her desk, pushes her door closes, and takes a deep breath. 

She feels calm. She can’t remember if this is how she felt in her bathroom at fourteen, but she’s surprised to find she’s not at all worried. She opens the pill bottle, unscrews the cap on the vodka, and pours a handful of pills into her hand. She takes them all at once, almost choking as she tries to wash them down with a gulp of vodka. The whole thing makes her eyes burn. She does it again.

Sam leaves the library two hours after Drew. As she’s packing up her things, she finds Drew’s keys under a stack of her own papers, and is unsurprised at the sudden warmth in her chest. She texts Drew on her way out, telling her she’s going to grab some coffee and food and asking if she’ll be home for Sam to bring her keys by in half an hour or so. 

Drew doesn’t respond by the time Sam leaves the coffee shop, but she decides to stop by her apartment anyway; if Drew’s not home, she can leave the keys inside, but if she is… Well, Sam’s perfectly happy to admit that she wants to see Drew as much as possible. 

They’re not dating or anything, but they’re adults, and they’re adults who like each other. Sam knows there’s _something_ between them, even if it’s not far beyond simple attraction. So, sure, she wants to see Drew, but she’s also not willing to carry someone’s keys around—especially someone with two roommates—until she happens to run into her again. 

On her way to the apartment, Sam finds herself humming a Fleetwood Mac song—one she can’t quite identify—under her breath. It’s dreary out, a little too wet to be just foggy, and a few degrees too cold for the jacket Sam’s wearing. She pulls the hood more tightly around her face and picks up her pace; God, she misses the California sun, sometimes. Like now, in particular.

She knocks, first, after letting herself into the building and climbing the single flight of stairs up to the second floor. When no one answers, she checks her phone again, just to make sure Drew hasn’t responded. She only has one notification from Facebook, so she uses Drew’s keys to let herself into the apartment.

The lights are mostly off, but it’s just bright enough that Sam can’t call it dark. It doesn’t look like any of them are home, but Sam decides to check their rooms first. She’ll leave the keys on Drew’s bed if no one’s here. She heads down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Alisha’s door is wide open and the room is clearly empty, so she steps towards Drew’s closed door. She knocks, and when there’s no answer, she opens the door to reveal and empty room. Sam sighs at the rush of disappointment, but moves into the room to leave the keys on Drew’s desk, anyway.

As she’s closing Drew’s door, she hears a muffled noise—Sam can’t help thinking it sounds like panic—from Lena’s room. She’d assumed Lena wouldn’t be home; in fact, she was surprised she hadn’t seen her at the library. Sam steps toward Lena’s door, almost closed but not clicked into place, with a growing sense of dread she can’t seem to place. 

She knocks softly, but when she receives no answer, she shoves her trepidation aside and pushes the door open with a bit more force that was probably necessary. Lena’s inside, slumped on the edge of the bed and looking worse than Sam’s seen her at any bar.

“Sam,” Lena whispers; her voice is so slurred Sam barely even makes out her own name. “You’re not…” Lena’s eyes slide closed and Sam feels a lurch of panic that doesn’t subside when Lena pries them open again. “Not s’posed to be here.” 

“Lena, what—” Sam cuts herself off, stepping farther into the room and looking around. On Lena’s bedside table is a bottle of Smirnoff—about three quarters full—and an Ambien bottle with the lid beside it. Sam swears her stomach falls out of her feet.

“Lena,” she says, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, “tell me you didn’t.” She’s so scared she already knows the answer. Lena smiles at her then, slow and too big and eyes entirely unfocused.

“So sorry, Sam,” she mumbles again, her words getting progressively less intelligible. “I– ‘m so, so sorry. You should leave.” Lena nods to herself, still smiling, then pitches forward. Sam barely manages to move fast enough to catch her. 

By the time she gets Lena sitting upright again she’s already dialing nine-one-one. Lena tries to bat the phone out of her hands, but it looks like she’s moving through molasses. Her eyes are drooping more and more with every second. Sam’s hands are shaking so badly she barely manages to hold the phone to her ear.

She barely remembers any of the conversation with the emergency services, just trying to pull Lena up and toward the bathroom, ending up half carrying her. Lena doesn’t even seem to realize that Sam’s jacket is wet from the half-rain outside. When she tells the woman on the other end of the line her friend’s overdosed, Lena starts to cry.

Sam’s hung up the phone and an ambulance is on the way—she does hope this doesn’t cost Lena too much, even if she is rich—by the time she has Lena in the bathroom. Lena’s been slurring apologies since Sam pulled her into the room.

Sam _knows_ how dangerous it is to make people throw up, she does, especially when they’re as out of it as Lena is, crying and smiling all in one breath, barely able to keep her eyes open. So, yes, she knows the dangers, but she also knows—only explicitly from Drew, but still—that Lena’s barely a year out of a decade of eating disorders, and she knows Lena knows what to do. (God, she hopes she’s not making the wrong decision.)

She lowers Lena onto the floor against the tub before moving to the sink. There’s a Nalgene on the counter, and she knows it’s probably Alisha’s but she really doesn’t give a shit about whose it is, now, does she?

“Don’t you fucking dare fall asleep on me, Lena,” she warns as she fumbles to turn on the faucet. She sees Lena try to shrug out of the corner of her eye. _Shit_. Sam has no fucking clue what she’s doing. 

She barely remembers to turn the water off before she’s kneeling beside Lena, shoving the overflowing water bottle into her hands. Lena almost drops the thing, can’t even seem to grasp it, and Sam gives up without another try. She holds the Nalgene up to Lena’s mouth.

“You need to drink this, Lee,” Sam says, tipping the bottle forward even as Lena tries to shake her head. Lena’s eyes fill with new tears as she struggles to drink the water Sam’s spilling down her face and shirt, but she keeps drinking until the water’s gone. Sam doesn’t think she’s ever been this scared in her _life_ , teenage pregnancy and childbirth be damned.

Lena’s stomach seems to lurch with the addition of almost a liter of water, and Sam moves to turn Lena around. She forces her up onto her knees and holds her body over the side of the tub, holding Lena’s hand, wet from the spilled water, up to her. 

“Lena, I need you to throw that up, okay?” Lena looks so confused, so delirious and upset, and normally Sam would downright despise herself for asking someone—someone trying to fucking get _over_ an eating disorder—to do something like this, but Lena’s almost too far gone; Sam feels like she might not be too far behind. 

Lena doesn’t move, and Sam finds herself moving Lena’s hand, first two fingers out and the rest of her hand curled into a loose fist. Lena sighs, seeming just a bit more lucid than she has the past few minutes, and nods, though that really just ends with her head falling too far forward.

“So sorry,” Lena slurs once more before shoving her fingers into her mouth. Sam watches, able to do nothing but hold Lena up, as her friend gags, entire body lurching forward, again and again before she starts throwing up. Sam almost starts crying at the sight: nothing but water, the sticky yellow of bile, and dozens of partially dissolved white tablets. 

It’s been over two minutes, now, and Lena’s not throwing much else up, even though she keeps trying. Sam relaxes her hold on Lena slightly, and the younger woman sags completely, almost sliding onto the floor. Sam tries to get her to turn toward her, and Lena’s eyes are barely open. She can hear sirens at this point, hopes they’re for Lena, and feels a new surge of panic somewhere in her throat. 

She manages to pick Lena up, bridal style, and she carries her back toward the main rooms of the house. Lena’s shirt is covered in water and strings of her own vomit, and the rest of her is getting wet from being pressed against Sam’s jacket. Her head is lolling to the side, and Sam’s not even sure if she’s conscious at this point. 

Sam sees a hoodie on the couch, and hates herself for stopping. But she knows Lena, and she knows how much Lena hates who she is—well, apparently, she didn’t know _quite_ how much—, and she knows how much the press would kill for shots of Lena passed out in an ambulance, and she knows Lena will never speak to her again if she lets anyone see her like this. As she lowers Lena onto the couch, the girl opens her eyes. 

“Am I really your friend?” she asks, just clear enough for Sam to make out. Sam feels something physically crack inside her.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Lena, of _course_ you are.” It comes out as almost a yelp, and then Lena’s eyes are closing again and she’s pitching forward. Sam ignores the building pressure in her chest and moves to steady her.

Once she’s got a hood over Lena’s head and the garment pulled halfway down her torso, she leaves the apartment, not bothering to lock the door behind her. The sirens are outside now, she’s pretty sure, and she’ll take boneless arms for three days if it saves twenty seconds that could mean Lena lives.

She carries her down the stairs, almost able to find a balance between speed and not dropping Lena by the time she reaches the lobby. She uses her shoulder to push through the stair door and sees two EMTs wheeling a gurney into the lobby. The woman spots her first, her face drawing into something Sam can only describe as professional.

“Samantha Arias?” she asks, already directing the stretcher toward her. At Sam’s hasty nod, the two EMTs with the stretcher move to take Lena from her. As soon as Sam’s arms are empty, she starts to sob, trailing after the EMTs and insisting they don’t let anyone see who’s on their gurney. 

Sam knows her argument’s terrible and she’s barely making any sense, and the young man seems to have had enough of her protests, but the woman agrees fairly quickly. 

“Lou,” Sam hears her say as she follows them onto the street through her haze. “Do you really think she needs the media attention right now?” The man finally concedes, but keeps grumbling about it even as Sam follows them up into the ambulance and hands over the empty Ambien bottle she has no memory of pocketing, even as she cries the entire way to the hospital, even as they rush Lena into the emergency room.

Sam hasn’t been to a hospital since Ruby was born, and she’s completely unaware of sitting down in the waiting room until someone in scrubs walks over to her. Still out of it, Sam tells her who she’s here for and rattles off all of Lena’s information that she knows, which isn’t as much as she’d like. She refuses to give the nurse any family for Lena, and eventually she stops pushing, telling Sam someone will update her when they have information. Sam barely remembers to thank her. 

Almost twenty minutes after the nurse leaves her, Sam feels cried out, hollow, completely empty. She realizes, numbly, that she needs to tell Drew and Alisha. With her hands still shaking, she pulls out her phone and brings up Drew’s contact information. The line rings all the way through to Drew’s voicemail. Without leaving a message, she calls again. The same thing happens. On her third call, Drew picks up.

“Sam, what is it? I’m at a movie.” Sam can hear the annoyance in her tone, vaguely remembers Drew telling her she was seeing _The Lazarus Effect_ today, and can’t bring herself to be hurt. Sam can’t manage to get any words out.

“Sam?” Drew asks, suddenly a lot more on edge. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t go in your bathroom.” Sam finally manages, somehow both hysterical and completely emotionless. Sam cuts Drew’s confused question off. “Your front door’s unlocked. There’s vomit in your tub. You shouldn’t go in there.”

“What’s going on?” Drew asks, sounding completely freaked out. Sam takes in a shaky breath, steadying her voice.

“It’s— I was bringing by your keys, and you weren’t home, but I wanted to check, and… Lena tried to kill herself,” she finally whispers. There’s a strangled sound on the other end of the line; Sam can’t tell if it’s a gasp or a sob. 

“What?” Drew croaks. 

“I made her throw up in your tub.”

“You’re serious?” Drew’s crying, Sam can tell, and she hates that she had to tell her this. 

“Yeah,” Sam whispers. Drew lets out a broken laugh. 

“Fuck. Of course she— _Fuck_ ,” she spits. “Is she okay? Is she…” She doesn’t finish the question, and Sam doesn’t blame her. She shakes her head, even though Drew can’t see her. 

“I don’t know,” Sam sobs. Apparently she’s _not_ cried out. 

“Christ, Sam,” Drew cries. “I’m getting Alisha. Are you at the hospital?” 

“Yeah. I’ll see you soon.” 

Sam stops crying before Drew and Alisha arrive, but Drew doesn’t. The second the other woman sees her she’s running toward her, launching herself at Sam before she barely has a chance to stand and sobbing into her shoulder. Sam runs a hand over her long, blonde hair and tries not to think about how nice she smells.

Alisha joins them a moment later. She’s not crying either, but the foundation under her eyes is worn off and her curly hair looks wild in a way Sam’s only seen it after spending the night at their apartment or a long finals study session.

“Do you know anything?” Alisha asks her, taking the seat next to Sam’s. Sam shakes her head, sitting back down in her own chair and pulling Drew down with her. Drew curls herself around her, and Alisha takes Sam’s left hand, the one not currently rubbing soothing circles into Drew’s back. Sam glances down at their joined hands, and, with a jolt of panic, hopes that she only looks so pale in comparison to Alisha. It’s a hollow hope, Sam knows, since she swears she felt every ounce of blood leave her body the second she saw Lena in her bedroom.

“You doing okay?” Alisha asks. Sam shrugs, and hears Alisha sigh. It sounds like agreement. She looks over at her then, body coiled against the edge of the chair, muscles tensed underneath the gray athletic tights and mouth set. Sam knows Alisha ran track at MIT, and right now she can see it; she looks like she’s gearing up to take off running. It’s then Sam remembers that Alisha’s been friends with Lena longer than either she or Drew; if she feels so close to disintegrating right now, she can only imagine what Alisha’s feeling. 

Sam doesn’t know how long they wait, but it’s not until a doctor comes out and tells them that Lena will be fine—physically so—after she wakes up that Sam remembers Ruby. She extracts her arm from around Drew to pull out her phone and call Andrew—another friend from her major. 

When he picks up, she doesn’t tell him what’s happened, but he seems to sense it’s something bad, and doesn’t press. He agrees to wait for Ruby at her bus stop and make her dinner, and offers to stay with her for as long as Sam needs. She offers to pay him for his trouble, but he only laughs.

“Ruby’s a great kid, Sam. And you have a TV. What more could I want?” She manages a soft laugh as she thanks him again, hanging up the phone and sinking back into Drew. 

Sam gets into a shouting match with the hospital staff. It’s not technically her proudest moment, but they insist that only family can see Lena right now, and Sam’s almost blinded by fury. 

(“Oh really?” Sam had finally laughed, loud enough that people on the other side of the room are glaring at her. “What family is that? Are you gonna let her dead father in? How about her brother? He was just convicted of mass murder. He’d probably be a _fantastic_ visitor!” She throws her hands up as one of the nurses tries to placate her, shrugging the man off but lowering her voice.

“She just testified against her mother in her brother’s trial. She’s a lovely woman. _Very_ warm. Do you want to ask her?”)

They’d finally agreed to let her through, ceding the point that blood relatives—or legal relatives, Sam supposes—would be good for Lena right now. 

When she steps into Lena’s room, she knows she looks like a mess. Lena, however, looks… Well, she looks like she’s just tried to kill herself, which means she looks worse than Sam. Lena won’t look at her when she walks in, and Sam hovers in the doorway for a moment before moving toward one of the two chairs near Lena’s bed. After almost two minutes, Lena finally looks up. There’s something in her eyes Sam can’t identify. 

“I’m so sorry,” Lena whispers and— _Oh_ , Lena’s eyes are full of guilt and _fear_. Sam just sighs.

“You fucking scared us, Lena,” Sam says, soft. Still, Lena flinches. Sam’s heart breaks all over again. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. Sam shakes her head.

“Lena, stop apologizing. No one’s mad at you.” Lena freezes at that, seemingly unable to meet Sam’s eyes, then plows ahead, apparently making the decision to change tactics completely. 

“Guess that means no one’s told my mother yet.” She tries for a laugh, but they both know it sounds more like a hollow sob.

“Can I hug you, Lee?” Lena seems like she doesn’t know how to respond to that, and Sam knows it’s because she doesn’t, but she nods, after a moment. 

Sam gets out of her chair, suddenly needing more than anything to touch Lena, to make sure she’s really there. When Sam’s just inches from her bed, Lena sighs.

“I don’t need you to baby me, you know,” she says. Sam thinks it’s supposed to sound harsh, but it mostly just sounds sad. Sam sighs.

“I’m not babying you, Lena. You scared me, and I would be so beyond upset if you had died. If you don’t want me to hug you, I won’t, but it’s not because I’m babying you. It’s because I care about you.” Lena shrinks slightly under Sam’s words, but lets the older woman climb awkwardly onto the bed beside her. Sam pulls her into her arms, running her fingers over Lena’s shoulders. It’s only seconds before Lena starts to cry. 

“I’m sorry,” she mutters, over and over as Sam tries to soothe her.

“I know, Lena, I know.” 

“I don’t know what to say,” Lena hiccups, minutes later. Sam, somehow, softens even further.

“You don’t have to say anything. I doubt I’d be much help, anyway.” She’s aiming for a laugh from Lena, but she’ll admit she’s shooting a little high; she counts it as a win when Lena doesn’t start crying again, though.

Sam’s still shoved into the bed beside Lena almost twenty minutes later. A nurse who’d come in had only sighed, but otherwise ignored the situation. 

“Are you feeling up to seeing Drew and Alisha?” Sam asks, fingers still spidering over Lena’s back. Lena’s muscles tense under Sam’s hands. “They were really scared, Lee,” Sam murmurs, and hopes it doesn’t sound like guilt-tripping. Lena’s quiet for long enough that Sam thinks she might not answer at all, but then she sighs.

“Okay.” 

A few minutes later, Drew—tear-stained but dry-eyed—storms into the room, Alisha trailing after her, looking half scared and half sorry.

“Lena Kieran Luthor,” Drew practically growls. Sam feels Lena shrink against her. “Do you have any idea how—” she cuts herself off as she starts to cry again, dropping into a squat in the middle of the hospital room, sobbing into her hands. Good Lord, this is somehow worse than Sam imagined it would be. Still, she’s hit with a rush of fondness for both the woman crouched on the floor in front of her and the one beside her in the hospital bed.

She kisses Lena once, on the top of her head, then extracts herself from the bed, dropping down beside Drew in an attempt to calm her down. As she whispers something she hopes is soothing to Drew, she sees Alisha, from the corner of her eye, make her way over to Lena’s bed. She leans over to hug her, and Sam knows Lena’s not used to this much physical contact, and especially not from Alisha, since no one’s used to physical contact from Alisha. Still, she sees Lena melt into her, just slightly, and she feels something right itself behind her sternum. 

It takes Sam close to five minutes to calm Drew down, but after that it goes about as well as can be expected. They leave, about an hour later, with the promise to come back as soon as they’re allowed. Sam sees it in Lena’s eyes, when she lets herself believe they’re telling the truth. 

Over the next few days, Sam, Drew, and Alisha visit Lena. Sam comes a little more often than either of Lena’s roommates, and tries not to feel guilty for leaving Ruby alone too much. Sam’s pretty sure no one besides the three of them even know Lena’s in the hospital, except for maybe her advisors. Well, no one but them and Lillian Luthor, who’d found out two days into Lena’s hospital stay.

Sam had been in Lena’s room, reading an article from _The New York Times_ , when Lillian—sadly _not_ arrested—rolled into the room like a hail storm, a harried nurse trailing behind her. God, Sam hopes someday she’ll be able to forget the look on Lena’s face at her mother’s mere presence, yet alone the barrage of insults masquerading—though poorly—as care.

Mark her words: until the day she dies, Samantha Arias will _never_ regret the way she way she yelled at Lillian Luthor on March 16, 2015, ~~if only for the way Lena thanked her like she didn’t think she deserved that kind of care~~ if only for the way Lena’s villain of an excuse for a mother seemed to shrink under the idea of someone so much as caring about her daughter. 

For all her _literally being in the hospital_ , Lena doesn’t bring up the suicide attempt. Sam’s either tactful or emotionally immature enough not to ask, and Lena seems grateful for that. When she returns to her apartment four days after Sam found her with a new therapist but no other change to her routine, Sam does her best not to comment. 

Things slowly go back to normal after that—as normal as they can after the Luthor trial, and all, anyway, except Sam stops pretending not to notice the little things—the way Lena traces squares against faint outlines on her thighs through her clothes, the way Drew and Alisha hawk watch her during meals, the way she always, _always_ hesitates when Sam offers her a snack—and proceeds as if she already knows until Lena decides to tell her.

And Lena does tell her, eventually, about painting her nails instead of eating, about how quickly she can disassemble the head of a razor, about eating only cucumbers, tangerines, and Gatorade for two full weeks. She talks to her, too, about her plans for LuthorCorp, which she sees as her duty to take over and effectively rebrand, about blueprints for a single-scan device to detect illnesses, about her love for Lex, despite everything.

Lena finishes her programs as quickly as she can, and, by the time she graduates, she and Sam are best friends, despite Sam’s relationship with Drew not working out. Lena’s never really had friends before, and she’s not very good at it, but she does her best. 

But Lena moves across the country and away from her friends. Away from Sam and people she was never all that close to, but who made coming home every night more than bearable. She’s just about resigned herself to a persistent, shallow loneliness, the kind that nags and makes something hurt behind her sternum. She’s just about resigned herself to her secretary—whom she never sees outside of work—being her closest (and only) friend, and then she meets Kara Danvers.


End file.
